One part of life that I’ve become really curious about in the past few years is dying. I didn’t think about it at all when I was in college and played racquetball on a Saturday morning following a little too much end-of-the-week celebration the night before.

There were moments in the four decades that followed when death reared its head — close friends from my college years passed away, and I lost both my parents — but aside from the immediate grief, I continued to live life like most of us probably do: on cruise control. I got up, I went to work, I pursued my personal interests, and I went to bed. Rinse and repeat.